About Kodak's business model...

[Jonathan Wienke]

That would be the P&S digicam market, which is larger than the professional market by a fair bit. In the professional DSLR market segment, Kodak is not particularly competitive.

[BernardLanguillier]

That seems to be in the US market.

From what I see around me here in Tokyo, the presence of Kodak in the Japanese digital camera market is close to zero. That alone would make it just impossible for Kodak to go very high in the workwide rankings considering that the Japanese market is almost equal in size to the US and European ones.

This is just unsubstanciated feelings though.

Best regards,
Bernard

[etmpasadena]

They certainly do know what they're doing. I just tried their professional glossy inkjet paper along with their custom ICC profiles for the Epson 1270 and it is superior to what Epson offered. In all fairness to Epson I probably could have paid 100 bucks for a custom profile. But the Kodak profiles were much better out of the box for the 1270 than Epson's ever were.

On an aside, Kodak's ERI jpeg technology is very nice. On their DCS camera web page Kodak links to a technical paper that gives a detailed overview of this particular brand of jpeg. It's a good read for anyone interested in digital imaging in general.

[Ken]

From CNET News.com, by David Becker...
              
The digital camera market has turned into a dead heat, with Kodak virtually tied for the top spot with perennial sales leader Sony, according to an IDC report.

Canon was third, moving 800,000 units for a 16 percent market share, followed by Olympus, with sales of 600,000 and market share of 12 percent.

Chris Chute, digital imaging analyst for IDC, said this is the first time since IDC started compiling such surveys that Sony hasn't had a clear lead."

[BJL]

Is that in the US market or world-wide? I had read that Kodak had moved up to near the top of the US market, but a jump to equal top world-wide would be even bigger news.

Not that there is anything wrong with being #1 "only" in the US market; many people seem to be reading Kodak's agressive cutting of its operations in the dying film sector far too pessimistically.


Emotionally, I have to say that I like any trend towards the resurgence of camera companies rather than electronics companies at the top, even if Sony ends up making most of the sensors.  In my less than comprehensive experience (none with Kodak), Canon and Olympus do better than Sony with ergonomics and such.

[BJL]

Yep, US market only, as explained in a news item at DPReview (http://dpreview.com/) on November 22. Still, not bad.

[philthygeezer]

That would be the POS digicam market...

Yeah, I know.  I used to own a refurb DC280...